He was good enough – and then some – to fight in America’s war on terror, but the NYPD contends decorated Army veteran William Rodriguez doesn’t have the psychological stuff required to join New York’s Finest.

“Ever since I was a kid, I wanted to be a police officer. But not just any police officer – a New York City police officer,” said the 27-year-old, who served with distinction on the battlefields of Kosovo and Iraq.

“I know I’ve made mistakes in my life, but not the kind to keep me from my dream. It just breaks my heart.”

City lawyers claim Rodriguez is “psychologically unsuitable,” based in part on his answers to a pre-employment questionnaire, and are determined to stop him through the courts.

“We have reviewed the legal record in this case and concluded that an appeal is warranted,” said Leonard Koerner, chief of the appeals division of the city’s Law Department.

Rodriguez first applied to the NYPD on April 27, 2002, three months after he was honorably discharged from a three-year Army hitch. He later passed the entrance exam.

The 6-foot-3, 200-pound Elmont, L.I., resident seemed an ideal candidate. He’d served with the peacekeeping force in Kosovo and was awarded the Army Service Ribbon, the Army Good Conduct Medal, the Kosovo Campaign Medal and the NATO Kosovo Medal.

He was also a Transportation Security Administration screener at Kennedy Airport.

But his application was derailed by a November 2002 pre- employment questionnaire. Court records show NYPD staff psychologist Mark White was troubled by Rodriguez’s answers on a psychological exam.

On July 11, 2003, the NYPD backed White’s recommendation, concluding, “His personality traits [are] incompatible with the unique demands and stresses of employment.”

That August, however, Gerold Levine, Rodriguez’s lawyer, appealed to the city’s Civil Service Commission, insisting the test scores showed “no psychological abnormality of any kind.”

Levine said Rodriguez’s an swers were “subjective.”

Four psychologists backed the NYPD’s decision.

But Levine offered evidence from Robert Daley, a Ph.D. and for mer director of psychol ogical services for the NYPD, whose doctoral thesis was on the psy chological disqualifica tions of police-officer candidates.

Daley, an ex-NYPD detective, found Rodriguez “fully mentally competent and a suitable candidate for employment as a police officer,” court papers state.

The Civil Service Commission conducted a hearing in May 2004, one day before Rodriguez was shipped out to Iraq for a dangerous 18-month tour as a National Guard reservist.

In November 2004, Rodriguez was awarded a Bronze Star for saving the life of a suicidal soldier.

The following month, the commission reversed the NYPD decision and ordered Rodriguez back on the eligibility list.

Rodriguez went on to win the Army Commendation Medal for saving himself and three companions from a terrorist.

He was still in Iraq in April 2005 when the city filed a lawsuit to overturn the commission’s ruling.